The number on the front is the net gas weight — the fuel only. The steel shell is extra, it is carried full and empty alike, and it is the reason a canister comparison made on kitchen scales is not comparing what you think.
Net, gross and empty
Three weights describe a canister and only one of them is usually on the label.
The net gas weight is the fuel: commonly 100, 230 and 450 g, and it is what the size designation refers to.
The gross weight is the canister as sold, fuel and shell together. It is what your scales read.
The empty weight is the shell alone, and it is the figure that tells you what you are carrying home. Makers who publish it make the arithmetic possible; where it is missing, you can still get there by weighing a canister you have finished with.
The difference matters because the shell is not a small fraction of the package on the smaller sizes. Two 230 g canisters carry the same fuel as one 450 g canister and two shells instead of one.
Why this is the site’s usual complaint in miniature
A weight published without saying what it counts is not a measurement, and this category is the clearest case of it. It is the same problem as a tent quoted at a trail weight by one maker and a packed weight by another — one counts what stands the shelter up, the other counts the pegs, the guylines and the stuff sack, and the gap runs to several hundred grams.
Read what the number includes before comparing two of them. On canisters that means asking whether you are looking at net or gross; on shelters it means asking which of the two weights the maker has chosen to publish.
Estimating what is left
Weigh it. A canister that started at a known gross weight and now weighs less has burned the difference, and if the maker publishes an empty weight you can say how much remains rather than how much has gone.
Everything else is guesswork. A canister that feels light on a cold morning may be nearly full, because pressure falls as the air cools and as the canister empties, and both produce the same weak flame. Weight is the only figure that separates the two causes.
Size against pack space
Net gas weight is not the only thing that changes between the three sizes. Diameter and height change too, and those decide whether a canister nests inside your pot and how stable the stove sits when it is screwed to the top of it.
A pot that will not swallow its own burner and canister costs more pack volume than the grams a lighter pot saves. Check the internal diameter of the cookware against the canister you actually buy, because a wide, low canister and a tall, narrow one of the same fuel weight pack completely differently.
Buying for a route
Two more things belong in the decision, and neither is a weight. The valve type — EN 417 threaded with its 7/16 inch UNEF fitting, bayonet, or pierceable — has to match the wording in your stove manual, because the three do not interchange. And the gas mix, published as proportions of propane, isobutane and butane, is what describes cold behaviour.
Then there is resupply. The size that is easy to find on the route usually beats the size that is optimal on paper, and a canister you cannot replace is fuel you have to ration.
For handling, storage, transport and use, follow the manufacturer’s instructions on the canister and in the stove manual. Those documents govern the equipment.
The manufacturer's own instructions come first, and this page does not stand in for them. Every weight, packed length, hydrostatic head, denier, micron rating, lumen figure and temperature on this page is reported from the manufacturer's own documentation, with its unit written as published, and named as such — none of it is measured here. A weight is reported as the maker counts it, and is never restated as another kind of weight, because the two are not the same figure. And for anything with a flame: a stove and its cartridge are used as their own instructions say, and nowhere else. Thread compatibility, ventilation and where a stove may be lit are set by the maker and by the site you are on, not by a comparison page.
What people ask before buying
How do I work out how much gas is left?
Weigh the canister and subtract the empty weight, where the maker publishes one. That difference is the gas remaining, and it is the only method that does not involve guessing from how the canister feels in the hand.
Is a 450 g canister more efficient to carry than two 230 g ones?
It carries one shell instead of two, so it is lighter for the same gas, and it is also taller and wider, which changes whether it nests in your pot. The trade is between the shell weight you save and the pack volume and resupply flexibility you give up.
Last reviewed 6 September 2026